Alfred the sculptor - yes, you know him, don't you? We
all know him; he was awarded the gold medal, traveled to Italy,
and came home again. He was young then; in fact, he is still
young, though he is ten years older than he was at that time.

After he returned home, he visited one of the
little provincial towns on the island of Zealand. The whole
village knew who the stranger was, and in his honor one of the
richest families gave a party. Everyone of any importance or
owning any property was invited. It was quite an event, and all
the village knew about it without its being announced by the town
crier. Apprentice boys and the children of poor people, and even
some of their parents, stood outside the house, looking at the
lighted windows with their drawn curtains; and the watchman could
imagine that he was giving the party, there were so many
people in his street. There was an air of festivity everywhere,
and inside the house, too, for Mr. Alfred the sculptor was
there.

He talked and told stories, and everybody
listened to him with pleasure and enthusiasm, but none more so
than the elderly widow of a state official. As far as Mr. Alfred
was concerned, she was like a blank sheet of gray blotting paper,
absorbing everything that was said and demanding more. She was
highly susceptible and unbelievably ignorant-a sort of female
Kaspar Hauser.

"I should love to see Rome!" she said. "It must
be a wonderful city, with all the many strangers continually
arriving there. Now, do tell us what Rome is like. How does the
city look when you come in by the gate?"

"It is not easy to describe it," said the young
sculptor. "There's a great open place, and in the middle of
it there is an obelisk that is four thousand years old."

"An organist!" cried the lady, who had
never heard the word "obelisk."

Some of the guests could hardly keep from
laughing, among them the sculptor, but the smile that rose to his
lips quickly faded away, for he saw, close by the lady, a pair of
dark-blue eyes; they belonged to the daughter of the lady who had
been talking, and anyone with such a daughter could not really be
silly! The mother was like a fountain of questions, and the
daughter, who listened silently, might pass for the naiad of the
fountain. How beautiful she was! She was something for a sculptor
to look at, but not to speak with, for indeed she talked but very
little.

"Has the Pope a large family?" asked the
lady.

And the young man answered considerately, as if
the question had been put differently, "No, he doesn't come
of a very great family."

"That's not what I mean," said the lady.
"I mean, does he have a wife and children?"

"The Pope isn't allowed to marry," he
replied.

"I don't approve of that," said the
lady.

She might well have talked and questioned him
more intelligently, but if she hadn't said and asked what
she did, would her daughter have leaned so gracefully on her
shoulder, looking straight before her with an almost melancholy
smile on her lips?

And Mr. Alfred told them of the glorious colors
of Italy, the purple of the mountains, the blue of the
Mediterranean, the blue of the southern skies, a beauty that
could only be surpassed in the North by the deep-blue eyes of a
maiden. This he said with peculiar meaning, but she who should
have understood it looked quite unconscious, and that, too, was
charming!

"Ah, Italy!" sighed some of the guests.

"Traveling!" sighed others.

"Charming, charming!"

"Well," said the widow, "if I win fifty thousand
dollars in the lottery, we'll travel! My daughter and I.
You Mr. Alfred, must be our guide. We'll all three go, with
just one or two good friends with us." Then she smiled in such a
friendly manner at the company that each of them could imagine he
was the person who would accompany them to Italy. "Yes,
we'll go to Italy! But not to the parts where the robbers
are; we'll stay in Rome and only travel by the great
highways where we'll be safe."

And the daughter sighed very gently. And how
much may lie in one little sigh or be read into it! The young man
read a great deal into it. Those two blue eyes, bright that
evening in his honor, must conceal treasures of heart and mind
rarer than all the glories of Rome! When he left the party, he
had lost his heart-lost it completely-to the young lady.

Now, the widow's house was where Mr.
Alfred the sculptor could most frequently be found. It was
understood that his calls were not for the lady herself, though
he and she did all the talking; he really came for the sake of
the daughter. They called her Kala. Her real name was Karen
Malene, but the two names had been contracted into the single
name Kala. She was extremely, but some people said she was rather
dull and probably slept late in the mornings.

"She has been accustomed to that since
childhood," said her mother. "She is as beautiful as Venus, and a
beauty always tires easily. She does sleep rather late, but
that's what makes her eyes so bright."

What a power there was in these clear eyes,
these deep blue eyes! "Still waters run deep." The young man felt
the truth of that proverb, and his heart sank into the depths. He
spoke of his adventures, and Mamma always asked the same
naïve and pertinent questions she had asked at their first
meeting.

It was a delight to hear Mr. Alfred speak. He
told them of Naples, of trips to Mount Vesuvius, and showed them
colored prints of some of the eruptions. The widow had never
heard of such things before, much less taken time to think about
them.

"Mercy save us!" she said. "So that's a
burning mountain! But isn't it dangerous for the people who
live there?"

"Entire cities have been destroyed," he
answered. "For example, Pompeii and Herculaneum."

"Oh, the poor people! And you saw all that
yourself?"

"Well, no, I didn't see any of the
eruptions shown in these pictures, but I'll show you a
drawing I made of an eruption I did see."

He laid a pencil sketch on the table, and when
Mamma, who had been studying the highly colored prints, glanced
at the black-and-white drawing, she cried in amazement, "When you
saw it did it throw up white fire?"

For a moment Alfred's respect for
Kala's mamma nearly vanished; but then, dazzled by the
light from Kala, he decided it was natural for the old lady to
have no eye for color. After all, it didn't matter, for
Kala's mamma had the most wonderful thing of all-she had
Kala herself.

And Alfred and Kala were engaged, which was
inevitable, and the engagement was announced in the town
newspaper. Mamma brought thirty copies of the paper, so she could
cut out the announcement and send it to her friends. The
betrothed couple were happy, and the mamma-in-law-to-be was
happy, too; she said it seemed like being related to Thorvaldsen
himself.

"At any rate, you are his successor," she told
Alfred.

And it seemed to Alfred that Mamma had this time
really said something clever. Kala said nothing, but her eyes
sparkled; her every gesture was graceful. Yes, she was beautiful;
that cannot be repeated too often.

Alfred made busts of Kala and his future
mamma-in-law; they sat for him and watched how he molded and
smoothed the soft clay between his fingers.

"I suppose it's only for us that you do
this common work," said Mamma-in-law-to-be, "and don't have
your servant do all that dabbing together."

"No, I have to mold the clay myself," he
explained.

"Oh, yes, you're always so exceedingly
polite," said Mamma, while Kala silently pressed his hand, still
soiled by the clay.

Then he unfolded to both of them the loveliness
of nature in creation, explaining how the living stood higher in
the scale than the dead, how the plant was above the mineral, the
animal above the plant, and man above the animal, how mind and
beauty are united in outward form, and how it was the task of the
sculptor to seize that beauty and imprison it in his works.

Kala sat silent and nodded approval of the thought, while
Mamma-in-law confessed, "It's hard to follow all that. But
my thoughts manage to hobble slowly along after you; they whirl
around, but I try to hold them fast."

And the power of Kala's beauty held Alfred
fast, seizing him and mastering him and filling his whole soul.
There was beauty in Kala's every feature; it sparkled in
her eyes, lurked in the corners of her mouth and even in each
movement of her fingers. The sculptor saw this; he spoke only of
her, thought only of her, until the two became one. Thus it might
be said that she also spoke often, for he was always talking of
her, and they two were one.

Such was the betrothal; and now came the wedding
day, with bridesmaids and presents, all duly mentioned in the
wedding speech.

Mamma-in-law had set up a bust of Thorvaldsen,
attired in a dressing gown, at one end of the table, for it was
her whim that he was to be a guest. There were songs and toasts,
for it was a gay wedding and they were a handsome pair.
"Pygmalion gets his Galatea," one of the songs said.

"That is something from mythology!" said
Mamma-in-law.

Next day the young couple left for Copenhagen,
where they were to live. Mamma-in-law went with them, "to give
them a helping hand," she explained-which meant to take charge of
the house. Kala was to live in a doll's house. Everything
was so bright, new, and fine. There the three of them sat, and as
for Alfred, to use a proverb that describes his circumstances, he
sat like the bishop in the goose yard.

The magic of form had fascinated him. He had
regarded the case and had no interest in learning what the case
contained, and that is unfortunate, very unfortunate, in married
life! If the case breaks and the gilding rubs off, the purchaser
may repent of his bargain. It is very embarrassing to discover in
a large party that one's suspender buttons are coming off
and that one has no belt to fall back on; but it is still worse
to realize at a great party that one's wife and
mother-in-law are talking nonsense and that one cannot think of a
clever piece of wit to cover up the stupidity of it.

The young couple often sat hand in hand, he
speaking and she letting drop a word now and then-with always the
same melody, like a clock striking the same two or three notes
constantly. It was really a mental relief when one of her
friends, Sophie, came to visit them.

Sophie wasn't pretty. To be sure, she was
not deformed; Kala always said she was a little crooked, but no
one but a female friend would have noticed that. She was a very
levelheaded girl and had no idea that she might ever become
dangerous here. Her visits brought a fresh breath of air into the
doll's house, air that they all agreed was certainly needed
there. But they felt they needed more airing, so they came out
into the air, and Mamma-in-law and the young couple traveled to
Italy.

"Thank heaven we are back in our own home
again!" said both mother and daughter when they and Alfred
returned home a year later.

"Traveling is no fun," said Mamma-in-law. "On
the contrary, it's very tiring; pardon me for saying so. I
found the time dragged, even though I had my children with me;
and it is expensive, very expensive, to travel. All those
galleries you have to see, and all the things you have to look
at! You must do it for self-protection, because when you get back
people are sure to ask you about them; and then they're
sure to tell you that you've missed the most worth-while
things. I got so tired at last of those everlasting Madonnas; I
thought I would turn into a Madonna myself!"

"And the food one gets!" said Kala.

"Yes," agreed Mamma. "Not even a dish of honest
meat soup! It is awful the way they cook!"

And Kala had become tired from traveling; she
was always tired; that was the trouble. Sophie came to live with
them, and her presence was a real help.

Mamma-in-law had to admit that Sophie understood
both housekeeping and art, though you would hardly have expected
a knowledge of the last from a person of her modest background.
Moreover, she was honest and loyal; she showed that clearly when
Kala lay sick, fading away.

If the case is everything, that case should be
strong, or it is all over. And it was all over with the
case-Kala died.

"She was so beautiful," said Mamma. "She was
very different from the antiques, because they're
all so damaged. Kala was completely perfect, just as a beauty
should be."

Alfred wept and the Mother wept, and both went
into mourning. The black dresses became Mamma very well, so she
wore her mourning the longer. Moreover, she soon experienced
another grief, when she saw Alfred marry again. And he married
Sophie, who had no looks at all!

"He has gone from one extreme to the other!"
said Mamma-in-law. "Gone from the most beautiful to the ugliest!
How could he forget his first wife! Men have no constancy. Now,
my husband was entirely different, and he died before I did."

"Pygmalion got his Galatea," said Alfred. "Yes,
that's what the wedding song said. I really fell in love
with a beautiful statue, which came to life in my arms, but the
soul mate that heaven sends down to us, one of its angels who can
comfort and sympathize with and uplift us, I have not found or
won till now. You came to me, Sophie, not in the glory of
superficial beauty - but fair enough, prettier than was
necessary. The most important thing is still the most important.
You came to teach a sculptor that his work is only clay and dust,
only the outward form in a fabric that passes away, and that we
must seek the spirit within. Poor Kala! Ours was but a
wayfarer's life. In the next world, where we shall come
together through sympathy, we shall probably be half strangers to
each other.

"That was not spoken kindly," said Sophie, " not
like a true Christian. In the next world, where there is no
marriage, but where, as you say, souls find each other through
sympathy, where everything beautiful is developed and elevated,
her soul may attain such completeness that it may resound far
more melodiously than mine. Then you will again utter the first
exciting cry of your love, 'Beautiful, beautiful!'
"